Aftermath of the Martian Invasion.
The Time Traveller was travelling through time in the machine at what would be described as a snails' pace by his friends; he knew by the space-travelling standards of his friends from the doctor to Filby, the Time Machine's stillness was disconcerting, but the Time Traveller knew his machine was only fast within a temporal sense.
His plan was simple enough, he would travel through time slowly so then he could see for himself the differences around himself while he purchased a few newspapers in order to see for himself the things that had been changing over every five years. In the meantime the Time Traveller wrote down notes in a little notebook he'd purchased for this purpose; many of his notes and observations were just basic, the way the buildings changed, how flowers opened and closed during day time, the weather conditions and how many hours of rain, sleet and snow just passed by in a minute or two before disappearing.
The Time Machine was going at a slow pace of a few days a minute or so, giving the Time Traveller enough time to observe the events going on about him. His view of the river showed the boats moving up and down in moments, and he used a powerful telescope he had placed in the Machine's workings to observe them in the short time they were within his view, but they were gone again before the Time Traveller could focus on them.
As he travelled through time, through futurity, the Time Traveller mused about the things he would need to bring with him the next time he once more travelled through time on one of his temporal studies; he definitely wanted to bring that Kodak camera he'd bought during that trip to New York on a whim, it would give the thing something to do…
It did occur to the Time Traveller to think about what he was going to do with the newspapers, pictures, and notes he was accumulating when he went on his travels into the future (he was still determined to view the past at some point, but he wanted to see more about the future so he could see for himself many of the things which would occur before he journeyed into the past); he would like to pass anything concerning the past to his friends, tell them about mysteries like what happened to the princes in the tower, the mystery of the fire of London, but he was unsure about what he was going to do about his knowledge of the future. Much of the reasoning behind his trips into the future was to help him become used to travel through time in the first place, but every time he saw the future, the Time Traveller was always stricken by a what-if whenever he considered the long-term consequences of what would happen if anyone from his year discovered what would happen in a few years time; they hadn't believed him when he had told them about the journey into the future where the Earth was overgrown, and they'd laughed at him when he had described several of the things he had paused to witness on the way into the future to the way to the year 802,701 AD, so he had stopped talking about it and he had left his friends believing he had once more pranked them stupidly.
Playing jokes and tricks on his friends may have been one of his favourite pastimes, to say nothing of the occasional magic tricks he played on them (honestly, how they fell for illusions was beyond him sometimes; to him, magic tricks were easy to solve when you've got a brain for solving the problems and when you'd posed a few tricks or practiced a dozen to them over an extended period of time), but there were moments where his habits caused issues where he wanted to be credible rather than laughed at.
They had believed the model of the Time Machine was a trick, they were hardly likely to believe him when he had told them about his initial trip into the future. He had jumped aeons into the future and he had made a host of mistakes. That was why he was travelling slowly through time, slowing down and occasionally leaving the Machine for a spell before he returned with more knowledge and expertise of what was going on around him.
He glanced down at the chronometric gauges - these faithful navigators, simply adapted from old steam pressure gauges, worked by measuring the number of days rather than comprehending the insane number of days in the months, a number which may not have been consistent, leap years, and so on (he recalled how he had fallen into the trap of navigating eternity; he had originally planned on building such a navigational mechanism for his Time Machine and its exploits before he'd discovered it would have taken too long, and in any case, he had realised his talent for arithmetic would serve him well) - and he saw he was rapidly nearing the year 1897.
The Time Traveller remembered how he had travelled further into the past beforehand, on his way to the future; he had travelled so fast into the future he had barely seen the changing world only a few years from his own time. Making a minute adjustment on the control levers, the Time Traveller slowed down the acceleration of his machine, and he resettled himself on the seat - he had removed the saddle he had salvaged from an old bicycle when he had realised how uncomfortable it was the first time, and uncomfortable, so he'd replaced it with something more practical - and prepared for a round of observation.
The Time Traveller slowed down the forward acceleration of the Time Machine to such a degree the days went by slower than they had before, which was perfect for observation. He had spent a lot of time experimenting with the workings of the controls of the Time Machine, and after he had jumped into the future, encountering Weena and the Morlocks, and going further, his knowledge of how to control the Machine and slow it down to the point where he was still journeying into time but was not slow enough to grind to a halt. The Time Machine moved slowly through the future, and the Time Traveller watched with interest as buildings that would have originally taken months to be built were built in seconds.
And then it all changed.
Where there was a landscape of completed buildings, now there was nothing but fire and destruction, in all directions.
Suddenly there was smoke in the air. Black smoke. The Time Traveller studied the smoke with interest, knowing it was not the kind of smoke you would have found coming from a good old coal fire; it looked more like a thick mist. The Time Traveller's nose wrinkled as he caught a distinctive chemical scent within the smoke and he quickly waved a hand in front of his nose to get rid of the stench when it began burning his lungs, and he began having a coughing fit. The Time Traveller saw no other solution but to stop the Time Machine and travel back in time a few days before the black smoke appeared.
As soon as he found a moment in the past where the black smoke had not reached London, the Time Traveller hopped out of his Time Machine and making sure he had the levers with him, he went off in search of information about what was going on. As he walked on the streets, he found to his astonishment and horror the local people were boarding up their homes and running away.
"Excuse me," he tried to say to one group; as usual whenever he wanted information he saw nothing wrong with getting it by asking. But unfortunately in this case the people were too frightened to listen never mind speak to him. After trying and failing to get the attention of others around him, the Time Traveller decided he'd had enough.
The Time Traveller managed to grab hold of one man and shook him by his shoulders to make him aware of what he was doing and what he wanted.
"What's going on?"
The man stared at him with panic in his eyes. The Time Traveller felt the fear he was feeling with trepidation. What was going on that would make so many people pack up around them?
"They're coming!" The stranger said, fear making him almost hysterical.
"Who's coming, man!? Make sense!"
"Where the 'ell have you been?" Fear was making the man belligerent and the Time Traveller hoped he didn't do something foolish. "The Martians are coming!"
The Time Traveller thought for a moment the man was telling a joke, but the fear he could see in the other man's face put a dent in that thought. He let the man go, seeing it was pointless to even try to hold on to him any longer. Ignoring the people around him, the Time Traveller looked around for something that would give him more information about what was going on around him, but there was nothing. He walked around the streets, hoping to find somebody less panicked than the man who'd given him the initial explanation, but no. Everywhere he looked people were packing up, taking whatever they could carry, food and supplies and juggling it with their families. He had covered a fairly large area, his mind racing with what he had just heard.
Martians.
Martians?
As in people, real living beings from the Red planet?
The Time Traveller was both surprised and yet accepted the idea alien life forms from other worlds existed; with his own discovery of time travel, and the exploits he had undertaken already, why would it be impossible or improbable for aliens to exist? But judging from what was going on around him, how people were running in panic and what he had seen before he had stopped the Time Machine and journeyed back into the past by a few days so he could discover what was going on, this was not a wonderful discovery for the peoples of Earth.
What he found in the newspapers were vague mentions of meteors crashing into the ground in various locations around the country, but aside from that there were no immediate signs of anyone being panicking over the landings; because that was what they were, landings. It made perfect sense; meteor crashes in various positions around England. But the details were too vague, so the Time Traveller moved forward a few days into the future, and he found more newspapers.
This time there were attacks, massacres and people in those areas were evacuated from the towns in order to get away. As he travelled further into the future, the Time Traveller found other stories that made him incredibly frightened and concerned. The Martians, according to the journalists reporting the events in question, were destroying everything in their path; they had even destroyed a ship! All the while they were spreading some kind of strange red weed.
They are transforming this planet into something they know, something they recognise; I suppose that makes sense; there is likely a chance the Martians have some nutritional need, perhaps some kind of fluid within the red weed is needed for them to ingest? The Time Traveller surmised as he sat in the Time Machine before he pushed the newspapers he had gathered away. He wanted to help. He was a scientist, an inventor… perhaps he could figure out some way of helping.
And then he thought of something he could do. He could travel forwards in time, observe the Martians' activities, a few days ahead, and bring the knowledge back for the government and the army. But he quickly realised that no matter what he brought forwards, the intellectual giants that ruled the government might even take what he had suggested, but not act on it. The Time Traveller picked up the newspapers, flicking through them rapidly to get to the latest newspaper, but he knew it would do little good. And it didn't; there was no mention whatsoever of any military action against the Martians. No victories, or at least some good done which involved some people managing to get away.
The Time Traveller ran a hand down his face, mind racing as he tried to figure out what to do. He knew despite what he had just read there was a chance, a slim one at that, he could do some good. Perhaps he could use the Time Machine itself-!
The Time Traveller shook his head, and he pushed the forward motion lever forward slightly, deciding to go forwards and to see the outcome of this horror. As he travelled forwards, he tried to recall his original time-travelling voyage into the far future, and he realised he had not seen any signs of Martians in the Morlocks world.
He made sure to move the machine at a slow velocity through time.
Had the Earth been enslaved for centuries only for the ancestors of both the Morlocks and the Eloi to overthrow them? No, that made no sense. He hadn't seen much-advanced technology in that future where the human race had split into two different and separate branches, where one had degenerated into the lowest form of human life by eating the other, but he hadn't seen any sign of the Martians or their tripod machines which had been described in the newspapers. He passed the day he'd originally first stopped at when he had first learnt of the Martian invasion of Earth (he preferred to think the Martians had a more widespread ambition than just conquering one single landmass; it made more logical sense for them to fire their meteor ships containing their war machines at other continents to maximise their hold on Earth, rather than send them to concentrate their power base in England, and then move onto the continent where they'd likely have to fight through heavier resistance), and he slowed the Time Machine to a crawl through time.
Everything… everything was just…destroyed… The street was deserted, but there were signs the road itself had been torn to shreds as though a giant forest of trees which had sprouted up through the ground, spreading like ivy and had then been torn up by the roots leaving behind great rips in the ground while leaving behind the holes and tears in what was left. It was a perfect description, really. The houses themselves were burnt-out shells of their former selves and glory, but aside from a few walls and a burnt-out shell of a house, the entire street looked like it had lost all traces of human civilisation.
It looked like the strange red weed spreading over the English landscape was also trying to consume everything that made Mother Earth what it was.
The Time Traveller was angry, the Martians were so keen to destroy everything around them that they seemed determined to force the world itself to forget there had been another civilisation on the planet by destroying everything in their path. He looked out over the horizon and he gaped in surprise when he saw the tripod machines stagger and collapse. One such tripod suddenly appeared right in front of the Time Traveller, staggering around all over the place like a child who had spun around before collapsing from the dizziness. The Time Traveller stopped the Time Machine, and he slowly stood up and walked over to the tripod, cautiously, hearing a metallic whirring within the tripod. A hatch opened, and the Time Traveller stepped forwards, gazing up at the Martian with scientific interest and superstitious horror.
The creature was like a massive brain with lipless, beak-like mouths, whipping tentacles with disc-like eyes blazing with alien intelligence. The scientist in the Time Traveller observed the creature with interest, wondering how on Earth-actually, the solar system, something could become like this. Was it a natural evolution, or something deliberately engineered? The Time Traveller did not know, nor did he know what had happened to this creature. If he didn't know any better, he would say it was sick…
The Time Traveller stilled and he looked at the red weed nearby. It wasn't entirely red in some places. Ignoring the Martian and the war machine, he hurried over and studied it. The red weed was turning grey, becoming the consistency of a rotting apple, and then he knew the truth of the matter. The Martians had come to Earth, breathed in the air of the planet's atmosphere, and they had likely eaten some of the food and drunk some water, and from that moment on they were doomed. They were dying because of the germs and natural bacterias present on Earth which humans were largely immune against. The Time Traveller had no doubt in his mind there was something similar on Mars; bacterias provided a lot of benefits like insects in the soil provided. The Martians were as immune to them as humans were on Earth. But they were not immune to the germs on Earth, and it was their downfall.
The Time Traveller looked over at the Martian. The creature seemed to be gasping, begging for breath…but the Traveller asked himself if the alien organism recognised what was going on, and knew it was hopeless. It then saw the Time Traveller, and one of its tentacles flickered close to the man outside time, begging for help.
The Time Traveller stepped back. He might be a scientist, but he knew if he helped this alien then it would continue with its mission and cause and destroy the human race, and besides he had no idea how he could do it in time to save the beings' life. It was such a waste; the Martian belonged to an advanced race. Who knew what it knew? But at the same time, it was too dangerous to be allowed to live. The Martian seemed to realise he was not going to help, and with its last hope gone, the creature died.
The Time Traveller stared down at it sympathetically before he turned and walked off, back to the Time Machine. He would move ahead, see what was going to come before he moved on to see if he could rescue Weena from the Morlocks. But as he walked back to the Machine, he wondered what the Martians would do next.
Author's Note - There was a literary crossover of sorts between The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, The Space Machine by Christopher Priest, but I wanted to write something with the original Time Traveller. I hope you've enjoyed it. Please let me know what you think.